


Soul Patch

by jedusaur



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: M/M, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-31
Updated: 2009-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/pseuds/jedusaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mitani is the only one who ever finds out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soul Patch

Mitani is the only one who ever finds out.

Hikaru doesn't tell him. If Hikaru told anyone, it would be Touya, of course (who is still Touya to him, never Akira, even after ten years of being the most important person in his life). There is nothing Touya wants more desperately than to know the truth about Sai, and Hikaru has always meant to tell him someday. But after the first few years of intermittent begging, arguing, and bribery, Touya resigns himself to waiting until Hikaru is ready. Without the pressure, it's easy for Hikaru to continue as he always has, keeping the only secret he's ever kept.

He hasn't really thought about Mitani in years when he spots him at an amateur Go tournament among the rows of serious downturned faces. Hikaru almost doesn't recognize him under the little red soul patch he's grown. It's a good thing Mitani is absorbed in his game, because Hikaru can't help snickering under his breath at the new facial hair when he first sees it.

Hikaru is at the tournament as a special guest pro, paid by the organizers to give a speech and sign autographs and shake hands, so they don't have much time to spend catching up. However, the two of them have both picked up a few manners since middle school, and they manage to perform the social niceties required to end up having lunch and a casual match the following week.

They get the small talk about families and careers out of the way over okonomiyaki. When their dishes have been cleared, Hikaru pulls out a portable goban, ignoring the waitress's expression since there are plenty of free tables left in the restaurant. Mitani gives himself four stones and loses by six moku, which isn't bad at all against Hikaru, and they loosen their ties and talk about old memories and old friends and the changing world around them.

When they part ways, Hikaru says they should do this again soon, and Mitani smiles and says, "I'd like that." So Hikaru adds him to his mental pool of people to call when he wants to hang out, and soon they've achieved a comfort with one another that they never had as self-conscious teenagers.

Mitani has lost the apathy of adolescence, and the detached manner Hikaru remembers as cold and callous has morphed over the years into something gentler. When they were thirteen, Hikaru always felt as if Mitani were waiting for him to finish talking so he could go do something more interesting. Now it feels more like Mitani is listening to everything he says, examining it carefully, and choosing whether or not to add to it. Hikaru wonders how much of the difference stems from Mitani's maturation and how much from his own.

***

It's true that Mitani is listening. He likes to figure people out, and while Shindou Hikaru seems like an open book on the surface, there's something about him that requires a good deal of figuring. Even when he was younger and didn't care about much of anything, his interest was piqued by the anomalies in Shindou's gameplay. He was usually much worse than Mitani, worse even than Tsutsui; but once in a while, when he was under a lot of pressure to do well, he drew on some hidden reserve of skill and thoroughly crushed his opponent.

Mitani is not the only person who's noticed this. However, he might be the only one who's noticed but not pressed Shindou on the issue, which means that Shindou begins to drop his guard about it. He doesn't say anything outright, but once in a while, his reactions to certain subjects start to provide hints. Honinbou Shuusaku. Ghosts. The Heian era. The fan he always carries with him. The "friend" who sparked his interest in Go. Mitani carefully notes each wistful sigh, the context of each time Shindou shuts down emotionally or evades a question, and he tests each trigger by subtly dropping it into conversation again weeks or months later. Finally, he's sure enough that he says it.

"Shindou, tell me about the ghost who taught you to play Go."

Shindou goes absolutely still. They're in Mitani's apartment, which is close enough to the Go Institute that Shindou sometimes drops by after his games. The two of them are sprawled on opposite ends of the couch, reading different sections of the newspaper, and Shindou lets his section waft to the floor. "There is no possible way you could know about that," he says slowly, fixing Mitani with an intense stare.

There's no way Mitani could have known for sure before broaching the topic, perhaps, but now he's pretty certain.

"Has he appeared to you?" says Shindou, his voice rising as the words sink in. "Mitani, have you seen him? How did you know? Mitani!"

"Tell me about him," repeats Mitani quietly.

There is a brief silence, and then Shindou tells him. Not everything, because he and Sai went through a lot together and even the important things start to fade after eight years, but still Shindou talks for nearly two hours. And for nearly two hours, Mitani listens.

Finally, as he tries to hide his tears over the end of the story, Shindou says, "You believe me?"

"I believe you," says Mitani, and means it. He believes that Shindou experienced everything he says he did, and that in Shindou's perception of reality, Sai really existed.

In a more sensible reality, Mitani goes to the library and searches the internet, and the term he comes up with is "episodic schizoaffective disorder."

The mystifying question, of course, is the strength. The only thing he doesn't understand is how a psychological disorder could make Shindou better at Go. At first he thinks Shindou must have learned as a child and somehow compartmentalized the skill into the part of him that forms the hallucination. But the more he learns, the more he begins to suspect that Shindou's journey into the world of Go progressed exactly as he says it did, and the bursts of brilliance are the result of something that happens in his brain when he's under particular stress. Most of the information that looks relevant is way over Mitani's head, but his theory is that the episodes of incredible Go happen when Shindou's body diverts resources to focus abnormally hard on the part of the association cortex involved in forethought and analysis, bolstering his strategic abilities.

It would explain why Shindou used to immerse himself so deeply in the board that he didn't notice anything around him, and nothing snapped him out of it except interfering with the game. The similarity of Shindou's early games to those of Shuusaku stumps Mitani until he realizes that Shuusaku must have had the same disorder, giving him a similar biological boost in planning capability. It makes sense that it would manifest in similar playing styles.

Mitani keeps reading, fascinated and curious and eager for explanations. He always remembers to put the books away in his bedroom before Shindou visits, which he has been doing much more often since that day. After keeping Sai to himself for a decade, he's clearly relieved to have someone he can talk to. Mitani isn't just humoring him or gathering data when he listens; he does care about Shindou, and he knows that reality is relative. He doesn't think of his friend with contempt or condescension.

What with Mitani's love for detecting behavioral subtleties and the emotional intimacy that has resulted from discovering the secret, it really ought not to come as the surprise it does when Shindou leans over one day and kisses him full on the mouth. It's Shindou's unmistakable air of straightness that throws him off; he's the opposite of metrosexual, a typical guy who likes manga and baggy shorts and violent expressions of platonic affection and, as a bit of an afterthought, having sex with men.

But unexpected doesn't mean unwelcome, and Mitani has no objection to the progression of events until the two of them are halfway across his bedroom and he remembers the stack of books by his bed. He freezes and then realizes too late that if he hadn't, Shindou would never have even noticed them. But even Shindou's natural obliviousness and current arousal can't mask the untimely hesitation, and Shindou looks around and spots the stack of psychological and neurological texts on the table. Mitani contemplates attempting to distract him, but Shindou has already summoned up the brain cells to work out what he's seeing, and doesn't grace his abrupt departure with words.

***

Hikaru knows Touya would understand. Touya is not Mitani; Touya would sooner die than grow a soul patch, both in the sense of being unwilling to do so and in the sense of likely collapsing of old age before the requisite number of hairs showed up. If Hikaru told his story, Touya would know that Sai was not a hallucination. He would pelt Hikaru with questions, but they would be about which games were Sai's and which were his, about who Sai was, about the internet Go and all the rest of the unresolved mystery he's built up in his head. He wouldn't question Sai's existence. Hikaru knows that.

Hikaru never tells him.


End file.
